This symposium was inspired by the suggestion often made by anthropologists that the cultures of Amazonia and Melanesia seem to display startling resemblances even though they are historically, linguistically, and geographically unrelated. Similarities are found in systems of ecological adaptation, "egalitarian" social organization, flexibility in local and descent-group composition and recruitment, endemic warfare, religious and cosmological systems, and men's cults and other gender-inflected institutions. While Amazonianists and Melanesianists have discussed such similarities at occasional meetings, the areal orientation of anthropology has discouraged attempts at systematic comparison of these regions. Appropriately held in 1996, the 100th anniversary of Franz Boas's landmark essay, "The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology," this conference focused on the promise and problems of interareal comparison. Bringing together leading contributors to the ethnology of the two regions, the symposium sought to develop deeper understanding of the cultures of Amazonia and Melanesia through comparison, and to examine the epistemology of comparative methods.